Tez Anderson: Surviving the Silence

When Tez Anderson was told he had HIV in 1983, the words hit like a hammer: You have two years to live. He was 26, full of energy, ideas, and ambition, but overnight, all of that was eclipsed by fear. It was a time when HIV meant one thing: death. And Tez, like so many others, began counting down the time he thought he had left.

But two years came and went. Friends disappeared. Lovers died. The pages of his address book were filled with red Xs, names crossed out by a virus no one could control, and a government that largely refused to care. He kept waiting for his time to come. It didn’t. Instead, he woke up each morning with the crushing weight of survival unacknowledged, unspoken, and unbearably heavy.

While the world eventually shifted to new treatments, better outcomes, and cautious hope, Tez noticed something no one seemed ready to talk about: the people who had endured the worst of the epidemic were fading into the margins. They weren’t dying anymore, but they weren’t exactly living either. They were invisible. And Tez refused to let that stand.

He gave a name to the quiet, aching grief so many were carrying: AIDS Survivor Syndrome. Not a clinical diagnosis, but a lived one, a name for the trauma, guilt, and isolation of surviving a war that stole so much. And in 2013, he built something radical in response: Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome), a movement for those who had been left behind by time and policy.

One year later, he created HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day, marked every June 5th, the same day, in 1981, that the CDC first reported what we now know as AIDS. For Tez, it wasn’t just a date. It was a reckoning. A chance to say, We are still here. And we matter.

Tez’s work isn’t abstract. It’s intimate. It’s drawn from the most complex parts of his life, the fear of dying young, and the unexpected, uneasy reality of growing old with HIV. He has turned decades of pain into purpose, transforming trauma into advocacy, and giving voice to a generation that has too often been silenced.

Now, more than 40 years since his diagnosis, Tez Anderson stands as one of the fiercest advocates for long-term HIV survivors. His story has been featured on NPR, FX’s PRIDE, and NBC’s Today Show, but recognition has never been the goal. Visibility, dignity, and justice have always guided him.

Tez doesn’t romanticise survival. He tells the truth in its raw, unvarnished, and honest form. He lived when so many didn’t. And he’s made it his life’s work to ensure those who did survive are never forgotten, never erased, and never alone.